Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to mooring boats, and more particularly to the mooring of boats bow forward wherein the body of the boat lies perpendicular to either a fixed or floating dock and wherein the boat is allowed full articulation independent of the dock.
As is well known, many new commerical and pleasure boats are produced each year. Furthermore, there are in existence in the United States, many hundreds of thousands of both commerical and pleasure craft. Due to the vast number of boats, the moorage to service them is a problem of major proportions. In the past years there was a high degree of availability of natural protected harbors allowing utilization as the need arose. Next came man made development of harbors lacking natural protection. The problem with which we are now faced is that in many cases it is no longer economically or environmentally sound for man made development to continue as in the past, while the demand for additional moorage has not slackened. Therefore, it becomes encumbant upon moorage developers to utilize every last available space in either new or refurbished marinas.
One solution to the moorage problem is the rapidly developing area of dry moorage. In this instance a boat is stored on land until the owner wishes to use the vessel, at which time it is lifted, via large machinery, from its storage point and placed in the water for use. While this is in and of itself a good partial solution to the moorage problem it has its drawbacks. First, there is only a limited amount of land available for this type storage. Second, the economics of this type storage require storage fees equal to or in excess of moorage fees. Third, the weekend boaters seem to want the use of their boat on Friday evening and to return Sunday evening, which creates congestion causing a substantial wait for the boat owner each time.
Wet moorage of vessels by utilization of a mooring buoy is probably the oldest and least damaging method of mooring for the boat. The problems with this system today are readily apparent, for example, the transportation between the mooring buoy and land and the amount of water surface space required for each boat.
Another solution to the problem of moorage was developed by Ross in 1965 in U.S. Pat. No. 3,187,706 granted June 8th, disclosing a semi-articulated mooring apparatus requiring a large finger pier between boats or the boat to be moored parallel to the main dock walkway.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,763,816 granted Oct. 9, 1973, to Wilson, Jr. discloses a concept similar to the Ross patent. In Wilson, Jr., a boat is moored in a semi-articulated mooring apparatus requiring a separate finger pier on each side of the boat as a mounting device for the docking apparatus.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,938,462 granted Feb. 17, 1976, to Brandt discloses a mooring apparatus with two separate support elements permanently affixed to a support platform and positioned so as to respectively lie on opposite sides of the said boat and with a spacing there between greater than the maximum expected beam of a boat to be moored at said apparatus. Mounted on the support elements are two support members for tensioning lines from the vessel. Additionally, there is at least one elastic stretch member mounted between said support elements.